Deer hunting; Be neither foolhardy nor full of fear

Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum might want to be a bit more careful.
His stunt of taking up the bow last weekend to hunt deer nominates
him for a possible John Gummer award.

Gummer was the British minister of agriculture who was famously
photographed in 1990 chomping on hamburgers with his 4-year-old
daughter, Cordelia. Gummer was trying to convince Brits that beef was
"absolutely safe," and that they could continue enjoying their
Yorkshire pudd and Sunday joint without fear of contracting a human
cousin of mad cow disease. Gummer the beef eater ended up eating his
words. He was wrong, and quite a few of Her Majesty's subjects were
dead to prove it. McCallum's mission was the same as Gummer's. The
Wisconsin governor sought to convince hunters that killing deer and
consuming venison are safe activities, despite the presence of
chronic wasting disease in Wisconsin deer herds. His concern is
understandable: In rural Wisconsin, as in Minnesota, hunting
generates quite a lot of cash for the local economy, and any severe
drop in the number of hunters taking to the field can have quite a
negative impact.

There's just one problem with McCallum's theatrics: Given the
presence of chronic wasting, McCallum doesn't really know that
handling deer carcasses and eating venison are entirely safe. It most
likely is safe, but no one knows at this point, and no one should
sugarcoat that truth.

So what's a hunter to do? For starters, realize that you will
have to make your own decision, and that it will involve quite a bit
of judgment. Understand what is known and what is not known about the
disease, and how to interpret both. For example, as late as 1996, the
World Health Organization still was saying that no proved link
existed between mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)
in humans. Now the WHO says no scientific link has been established
between chronic wasting disease and CJD in humans. That's reassuring
news, but it doesn't mean a link won't be found tomorrow.

Mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease and CJD are forms of
spongiform encephalopathy, in which an almost indestructible, vicious
little thing called a prion causes the brain to develop holes that
make it look like Swiss cheese, with effects on behavior about what
you'd expect, followed inevitably by death.

The human variant of the disease associated with mad cow
apparently crossed the species line when people ate contaminated
beef. The brain, spine and spleen are particularly capable of passing
on the disease.

Chronic wasting has been found in several dozen Wisconsin deer in
western Dane and eastern Iowa counties. The disease has not been
found in Minnesota deer, but one elk on an Aitkin County farm died
from the disease. About 100 deer from the area now are being killed
by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and sent to a
laboratory for tests. Very little is known about the disease,
particularly whether it, too, can pass from animals to humans.

Mad cow developed because British farmers were feeding their
livestock food that contained ground-up parts of sheep that had died
of scrapie, another spongiform encephalopathy disease. Once the use
of scrapie-tainted animal food was removed, new cases of mad cow and
ofCJD began to subside.

But chronic wasting occurs naturally in elk and deer, which means
it may be here to stay. That may actually turn out to be good news;
scrapie, after all, has been around for centuries and had never shown
an ability to jump the species barrier until offal from infected
sheep was ground up and fed to normally herbivorous cows.

Perhaps, somehow, the cattle played a key intermediate role in
equipping the prions to leap the species barrier. Perhaps people,
wolves and others up the food chain from deer and elk have nothing to
fear.

That would be good news, and there is preliminary epidemiological
data to support it. Chronic wasting has been a big problem for years
in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska, but hunting has continued, and
there is no sign of an increased incidence of CJD in humans in that
region.

Moreover, a wide range of other species _ from rodents to cattle,
sheep and moose _ have been exposed experimentally to chronic wasting
and have failed to contract the disease, suggesting it does not jump
most species barriers, at least not easily. Were it not for the
surprising situation with mad cow in Europe, there'd be no reason to
believe or even suspect chronic wasting might jump to human beings.

Researchers also make the point that Europeans, particularly the
British, were exposed in massive numbers to mad cow, and yet a very
small percentage eventually contracted CJD. That suggests it is not
an easy disease to catch.

Gov. McCallum's expression of certainty is understandable. When
hunters stay out of the woods, not only do local economies suffer,
but so do the deer herds; they require culling to remain strong. If
hundreds of thousands more deer survive hunting season in Minnesota
and Wisconsin to compete for winter forage, the stage could be set
for a large increase in vehicle-deer encounters on roadways, crop and
landscaping damage, and a decline in overall deer-herd health. So it
is natural that McCallum would want to counter fears he considers
unfounded. It's just that he can't be sure he knows everything there
is to know about chronic wasting disease.

Those who do decide to go ahead with a hunt this fall should take
steps to reduce their risk _ by avoiding deer that appear ill and by
following DNR instructions on how to butcher a deer safely.

Remember, too, that very few things qualify as "absolutely safe."
For the moment, venison doesn't qualify as one of them. But then,
hunting itself never did either.

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